"Wow. Give you a couple of severed heads and a pile of dead cows, and you're Mr Sunshine."

Then…

Another musical recap, this one focusing on the very different relationships Sam and Dean had with their father, the one close and trusting and the other highly tempestuous, and also highlighting their vampire encounter of late last season, as a clue to the audience of what's to come.

Now…

Red Lodge, Montana. A young woman runs terrified through the woods by night, pursued by a dark figure. She hides behind a tree, the figure passes by, and she relaxes, believing she is safe. This belief does not last for long – remember this fact for reference later in the episode: the moment you relax, believing you are safe, is when the danger is greatest. She turns, and there is that dark figure, right behind her. One quick swing of a sharp, curved blade, one spurt of arterial blood across the tree, and the woman's head tumbles to the ground, followed by her body. It's all very gory, but thankfully not close up.

This is a cautionary tale for all women everywhere, and the moral is this: do not go into the woods alone by night.

Fiery titles.

And…Back in Black! The Impala is back, baby! And boy, does she look good. Like new, in fact. You wouldn't have believed it possible. Dean has apparently done an amazing job of the restoration – we don't know how much time has passed since last episode, but clearly it's been long enough to effect this transformation of the car – and, as they cruise along, it's fantastic to see him so proud and happy after that explosion of rage at the end of the last episode.

DEAN: "Woo! Listen to her purr, you ever heard anything so sweet?"
SAM: "You know, if you two want to get a room, just let me know, Dean."
DEAN [to the car!]: "Aw, don't listen to him, baby, he doesn't understand."

LOL. Sam seems both bemused and delighted by his brother's good humour.

SAM: "You're in a good mood."
DEAN: "Why shouldn't I be?"
SAM: "No reason."

Only the faintest hint of tension there, very quickly glossed over by both. They both want things to be back to normal, at least as much as they can be.

DEAN: "Got my car, got a case – things are looking up."
SAM: "Wow. Give you a couple of severed heads and a pile of dead cows and you're Mr Sunshine."

Heh. They're still 300 miles from Red Lodge. Dean thinks this is a good thing – plenty more driving ahead in his newly rebuilt baby. And this is a beautifully upbeat scene, such a welcome relief after all the recent doom, gloom and angst.

It's all very summery looking, still. And yet it's meant to be autumn, going by the timeline of the show…

Red Lodge. And we have fake identity #1 of the episode: reporters, interviewing the walrus-like, heavily moustachioed sheriff. He's fantastic, doing a grand job with the official line of flannel regarding the two severed head murders his department is dealing with. Then, before he can usher the boys out, they sneak in one last question – asking about the cattle mutilations and querying a possible connection, maybe something ritual, Satanic. Sheriff Walrus laughs in their faces and then, on realising that they are serious, becomes scathing, and turns the official line of flannel up a few notches.

SHERIFF: "Those cows aren't being mutilated. You wanna know how I know…? Because there's no such thing as cattle mutilation. Cow drops. Leave it in the sun – within 48 hours the bloat'll spit it open so clean it's just about surgical. The bodily fluids fall down into the ground, get soaked up, because that's what gravity does."

Fantastic stuff, and delivered with beautiful sarcasm, as though he's speaking to particularly dense children. Then he gets nosy about which newspaper they work for again…. Dean promptly gets the name wrong. "I'm new." Hee.

I love that the boys are wearing the same suits here as in Something Wicked – nice to see that their wardrobes survived the crash!

Cut to – Candler County Hospital, and we have false identity #2 of the episode. Two in two scenes, that's fab. This time, though, there's no fake newspaper name to remember – just a couple of purloined white lab coats with which to look like they belong there. Dean promptly starts spinning his usual web of lies, putting the fear of his superior into the morgue attendant, who scarpers. Left alone in the morgue, while locating the corpse they are interested in and locking the door nice and securely so as to avoid awkward interruptions, the boys discuss a Satanist case in Florida wherein the victims were marked with reverse pentacles on the forehead.

"So much effed up crap happens in Florida," Dean sighs. Hehe.

So far, they are definitely hypothesising along the Satanic cult lines for this case. That kind of makes you wonder exactly how they'd go about shutting down these Satanists should they find them, humans engaging in supernatural evilness being such a grey area, and all.

Having already appropriated a couple of lab coats, they now also appropriate surgical gloves each for their examination of the victim's body. Or, rather, their examination of the severed head, which is being stored in a big plastic tub.

DEAN: "All right, open it."
SAM: "You open it."
DEAN: "Wuss."

Dean opens the box. They both look suitably grossed out, as usual. Any involvement with corpses tends to be the part of the job both of them enjoy least, judging by their very consistent reactions to them. Then, while Sam's still sympathising with the unfortunate victim, Dean is all business, ascertaining that there is no Satanic marking, and suggesting that they check the mouth to see if anything was stuffed down her throat. "You know, kinda like the Moth in Silence of the Lambs…"

Dean does like his horror film references. And Sam never appreciates them. There's some verbal sparring over who gets to perform the examination, with squeamish Sam drawing the short straw. "Yeah, I'm the wuss, huh?"

He gets on with it, getting more and more grossed out in the process.

SAM: "Dean, get me a bucket."
DEAN: "Find something?"
SAM: "No, I'm going to puke."

Dean rolls his eyes, and then, as Sam removes his hands from the mouth, notices something and says to pull the lip up again. Sam protests, "You want me to throw up, is that it?"

But Dean has seen something – a hole in the gums. And when this is pressed against, a retractable vampire fang is revealed…

"Well, this changes things," Sam observes, whereupon Dean rolls his eyes again in the universal gesture of 'duh'. "You think?" he snarks.

All of a sudden, this is an entirely different case than the one they thought they were dealing with.

Cut to – a seedy-looking bar, someplace in town. The Impala chugs past, the boys cast meaningful glances at the bar, and then move on – presumably to find a better parking spot than the middle of the road, since the next scene sees them entering. As they approach the bar, the camera lingers for a moment on the assortment of other bar patrons, highlighting one in particular, a man sitting drinking and smoking alone.

At the bar, the boys order a couple of beers, and then start in on the questioning. Because when you want information, the local bar is the first place you go. Barmen know everything that goes on in town.

SAM: "So, we're looking for some people."
BARMAN: "Sure. Hard to be lonely."

Walked right into that one. Sam resorts once more to offering money as a means of loosening the tongue, but we don't get to see Dean flinch at the sight of their ready cash being handed over so freely.

SAM: "So, these people, they would have moved here about six months ago. Probably pretty rowdy, like to drink."
DEAN: "Yeah, real night owls, you know – sleep all day, party all night."

As the barman, accepting the bribe, tells them about a local farm that's rented out to a noisy enough bunch, the Solitary Smoking Man pricks up his ears, paying close attention to the conversation. How exactly he can hear it is another matter entirely, since he isn't that close, and there's plenty of other noise to drown it out, but he clearly can. The boys thank the barman and head out once more. Lonely Smoking Man has already gone, leaving behind a cigarette burning away in solitude on the ashtray, alongside his watery-looking and virtually untouched beer.

Outside the bar, Sam and Dean meander toward the back of the building, presumably heading for the Impala. No-longer-Smoking Man hides behind a car while they pass, and then follows, thus confirming him to be extremely Dodgy in nature. Sam and Dean wander around a corner. Smoking Man approaches the same corner, a matter of seconds behind them. He pauses, and then continues with extreme caution, only to find no trace of them in the alley. And he's not cautious enough. Because they are just that good that they know perfectly well when they are being followed, the brothers Winchester sneak up on him beautifully, and pin him to the wall, Dean holding a knife at his throat.

Smoking Man is not best pleased about this. A lot of manly bluster is exchanged, during which Smoking Man amuses me by calling Sam 'Chachi' and it is established that Smoking Man himself is not a vampire. What he is, in fact, is a fellow hunter called Gordon Walker, although we don't learn the full name for a while yet, and he comes complete with tricked out car of his own, his stash including that wickedly curved blade from the teaser, just in case the audience was in any doubt as to how he connects to the case. Apparently every hunter must invest time, effort and money getting his car kitted out with a cunningly concealed arsenal. The boys have never heard of Gordon, but he's heard all about them, admiringly telling them that he met John once – "Hell of a guy, great hunter" – and has also heard of John's death, for which he offers condolences.

That grapevine the boys know so little about really does work fast. It's uncanny.

GORDON: "Big shoes, but from what I hear, you guys fill 'em. Great trackers, good in a tight spot…"
DEAN: "You seem to know a lot about our family."
GORDON: "Well, word travels fast. You know how hunters talk."
DEAN: "No, actually."
GORDON: "I guess there's a lot your dad never told you, huh?"

Seems like Daddy Winchester went out of his way to keep his boys well away from the majority of the hunting community, a chosen few friends aside. How much of that was about protecting them, and how much about controlling them, I wonder?

Dean eyes Gordon with deep suspicion. This is the second episode in a row where a complete stranger has proved uncomfortably familiar with his family, and he does not like it one little bit. As I've said before, Dean's trust in his dad has always been one of his most consistent character traits. No matter what happened, no matter what John did, Dean always had faith that he had a good reason for it, and no doubt hoped that if he could just prove himself sufficiently, John would eventually trust him enough for full disclosure. But now that John is gone there can never be full disclosure, never be any real reason why for any of those falsehoods, and every time they learn of a new deception – and keeping these kinds of secrets qualifies as lying by omission – a little more of Dean's faith is chipped away. And John is no longer here to seek reassurance from, can no longer restore that faith, which was once Dean's bedrock. No wonder he's wobbling.

Sam switches the subject away from the uncomfortable subject of John's death and the shadowy hunting community and back to the business of Red Lodge's vampire situation. Yes, Gordon confirms – the two recent beheadings were both vampires, both killed by him, but the farm the barman told them about is inhabited not by vampires but by a 'bunch of hippy freaks'. Dean promptly asks where the nest is, and Gordon smilingly, confidently brushes the question off. "I got this one covered." This is his gig, he's been working on it for over a year, and he does not want their help. He's a go-it-alone type of guy.

"Come on, man. I've been itching for a hunt," Dean wheedles enthusiastically.

Yeah, I bet he has. He can't go around randomly smashing things up indefinitely, but being on a hunt gives him a legitimate excuse to get violent and thus burn off some of that angry energy he's got churning away inside. He's putting up a better show of normality in this episode than last, but the same underlying issues remain, hidden beneath. Sam now starts casting sideways glances at his brother, just a tad concerned about this attitude. And Sam, we must remember, has got issues all his own.

"I hear there's a chupacabra two states over. Go ahead and knock yourselves out," says Gordon, smilingly. After reiterating his delight at having met the brothers Winchester, he hops into his car and drives off, leaving the boys standing there, exchanging meaningful glances. Will they really be content to just leave him to it? Or, since Dean is so hungry for an honest-to-goodness fight, and Sam is so keen to continue John's work seeing as he can no longer make peace with him in the flesh, will they want to see the case through now they've come all this way…?

Cut to – some kind of lumbermill, by night, deserted but for a quietly dozing security guard who is very helpfully wearing a nametag. This is Conrad. A noise awakens him from his peaceful slumber, and he wanders off to investigate. A very arty exterior shot shows him cross from the office into the mill proper, wherein he is startled when a crow comes flying at him. He breathes a sigh of relief. As seen in the teaser, this is always a big mistake – never drop your guard thinking it was a false alarm. The false alarm is itself always false. Conrad turns, and is promptly attacked by a mysterious stranger.

Except that it isn't a mysterious stranger at all. It's Gordon, the vampire hunter. And Conrad, it seems is a vampire…a vampire holding down a steady job. If that isn't reason to stop and think for a moment, I don't know what is. Gordon, however, does not give the matter a second thought. He just attacks…and completely loses the fight. What kind of a hunter is he, and how has he lasted so long, if this is the best he can do?

Conrad gets the better of Gordon with relative ease, pummels him into submission, dumps him onto a handy nearby conveyer belt beneath a wicked looking chainsaw attachment, and then activates said chainsaw attachment. He's totally going to cut Gordon's head off! But at the last moment, Gordon suddenly slides away from the blade, pulled by the feet. It's Sammy to the rescue!

And, yet again, we have Sam rescuing the victim, while Dean takes on the Bad Thing, which allows Sam to keep his hands relatively clean. With a life in peril, there's no time to ponder the whys and wherefores of how Gordon found the vampire there or what it was doing when he found it – I presume Dean and Sam simply followed Gordon, and the fact that he didn't spot them doing so loses him still more Good Hunter points – they just have to act fast to resolve the situation they find, which is human in danger due to supernatural creature about to kill him.

Dean overpowers Conrad with relative ease compared to Gordon's complete failure to do the same, pins him down with one hefty stab of a spear-like thing he finds just lying around the place, and then, with a kind of grim relish, uses that chainsaw attachment to remove the vampire's head. Blood spurts across his face, and it's all pretty gruesome. Sam certainly thinks so, and stares at his brother, looking deeply disturbed.

And…I can see why Sam is worried about Dean, because he isn't himself at the moment no matter how much of a front he puts up, and when he straightens up from killing the vampire he really does look bleak, dead eyes. But, seriously, what was he supposed to do? They caught the vampire in the act of trying to kill a man, a fellow hunter. It had to be stopped, they had to prevent it from killing anyone else, and the only way to kill a vampire is to chop its head off. He was doing what needed to be done, and if their usual roles were reversed, Sam would have had to do the same. I mean, he stabbed that rakshasa to death himself just last episode and afterward indulged in quiet satisfaction with a job well done.

And yet Dean's killing of vampire Conrad, the violence of it – although not really excessive – is bothering Sam, the need for the violence is bothering Sam, because he's worried about his brother: Dean needs to get it out, and yet it is also something that can feed off itself and spiral downward into self-destruction and despair. And he won't talk to Sam about any of it. So, Sam is concerned, and Dean returns his horrified stare with blood tricking down his face and a hint of defiance creeping into his eyes. But Gordon just laughs appreciatively, oblivious to the rampaging angst in the room, and says he needs to buy them a drink.

Next scene, and we're back at that seedy looking bar again. What did they do with the corpse of Conrad? Left it lying there? I really hope they cleaned up very carefully after themselves. The police are already investigating two murders-by-decapitation that they have no way of knowing were vampires, not humans, and wouldn't believe if anyone told them. They just think they've got a head-removing serial killer on their hands which, technically, I suppose they do, just not the kind they think.

With another round of drinks being delivered to their table, Dean goes to pay, but Gordon insists that it's on him, what with the life-saving and all. The two of them are indulging in shots to celebrate ridding the world of another evil thing. Sam just sits there in a funk, his beer sitting untouched in front of him, clearly not as satisfied with the outcome of this case as the others. They've fought and killed vampires before, so it's obviously Dean's volatility and Gordon's encouraging of this bloodthirst that's bothering him, rather than the actual killing of the vampire. At the moment, this is more about Sam's issues than Dean's.

Gordon is in jovial high spirits, cheerfully congratulating Dean for the kill, and Dean is enjoying the chance to unwind a bit, appreciative of the appreciation. But he's also aware of Sam's quietness. "You all right, Sammy."

Sam mutters that he's fine, whereupon Gordon encourages him to, "Lighten up a little, Sammy."

Sam gives him a dour look, nodding at his brother. "He's the only one that gets to call me that."

Both Dean and Gordon get the hidden message in that: as well as putting Gordon firmly in his place, Sam is making the point that he and Dean are a team, a unit, and that Gordon has no place in that. 'You and me against the world', and the point is much more for Dean's sake than for Gordon's, since Dean has been holding Sam so much at arm's length since John's death. Already feeling shut out, Sam does not like his brother bonding with this gung-ho stranger. Gordon backs off. "Just celebrating a little, job well done."

Sam remains unimpressed. "Well…decapitations aren't my idea of a good time, I guess."

Gordon rolls his eyes, points out that the vampire wasn't human, and tells him he has to have a little more fun with the job. That's a point on which Dean agrees. After the doom and gloom of recent events, Dean really wants to recapture his enjoyment of his work – he's always drawn so much satisfaction from what he does – and, since Gordon is so encouraging of that attitude, his earlier suspicion of the man has evaporated completely. Gordon is offering him the opportunity to just kick back a bit and soak up the pleasure of a job well done, and he's grabbing hold of that opportunity with both hands. Plus, Dean has always enjoyed drinking in company, this is nothing new, and Sam never has been much of a drinking buddy for him.

Sam looks from one to the other in disapproving fashion a little longer, and then decides to leave them to it and head back to the motel, rather than spoil their celebration. Dean wearily rubs a hand over his face and asks if he's sure, and suddenly Gordon is completely cut out of the loop – this is an entirely private exchange; the unit remains intact, albeit a little rocky right now. Sam heads out, Dean calls him back to toss him the car keys, and then Sam does make his exit.

GORDON: "Something I said?"
DEAN: "No, no, he just gets that way sometimes."

Sam's just being Sam, Dean doesn't really know what he's brooding about right now, and I'm not sure he wants to know just at this moment – he just wants to enjoy his evening and not have to think for a while. From his perspective, Sam thinks too much. So, with Sam and his mood safely gone, he brightens up once more and challenges Gordon to a round of quarters.

Back at the motel, Sam enters, tosses his coat aside, and then neatly hangs the car keys on the little cactus-shaped key holder thoughtfully provided by the motel owners.

Meanwhile at the bar, Dean is making the most of the opportunity to really cut loose and get into his beer for once, just unwinding and reminiscing with someone who's placing no pressure or expectations on him, and we rejoin him halfway through a nostalgic little tale.

DEAN: "So, I pick up this crossbow, and I hit that ugly sucker with a silver-tipped arrow, right in his heart. Sammy's waiting in the car, and, uh, me and my Dad take the thing into the woods and burn it to a crisp. I'm sitting there and I'm looking into the fire, I'm thinking to myself, 'I'm sixteen years old. Kids my age are worried about pimples, prom dates – I'm seeing things that they'll never even know. Never even dream of.' So, right then, I just sort of…"
GORDON: "Embraced the life?"

Aww. That's a clichéd but nice little insight into younger Dean. This may or may not have been his first real hunt, first kill, but what it clearly was, was a huge moment for him, one he remembers as the moment he decided this really was it for him – a moment that for once wasn't about what John needed, or what Sam needed, but what Dean recognised about himself and his life. It's something that Sam, who always so fervently wanted out, has never really understood or accepted about his brother. But it's significant that the story Dean is sharing here is all about killing the evil thing and embracing that particular facet of the hunter's life. It ties in with that angry energy and itch for a fight that Dean's feeling right now, and takes a step back from what has always been his overriding motivation for hunting: the saving of innocent lives. He's got too many negative emotions churning away inside for the fog to clear on that issue just at the moment.

Dean then asks about Gordon's reciprocal origin story, and a lengthy tale follows wherein the 18 year old Gordon saw his sister attacked by a vampire, couldn't explain to anyone what had happened, took off, learned how to track it down, and killed it. The mood of the conversation downshifts accordingly – Dean's story was a lot more upbeat. Dean offers condolences for Gordon's sister, and he gets all nostalgic about her, which paves the way for a little melancholy bonding over the loss of loved ones and for Dean to open up a little about John's death. Gordon prompts – "Your dad, it's got to be rough" – and Dean responds to that gentle opening, rather than Dean actually volunteering the confidence, though.

DEAN: "Yeah, you know – he was just one of those guys. Took some terrible beatings, just kept coming. So you're always thinking to yourself, 'he's indestructible, he'll always be around. Nothing can kill my Dad.' But just like that [snaps his fingers] he's gone."

The mood has become very sombre now. Dean really needed to get some of this out, and it's often easier to talk to a complete stranger, someone with no vested interest in any of your issues, than it is to be honest with someone close to you. This is also the right kind of situation for him to open up – reminiscing about John over a lot of alcohol – whereas we've only ever seen Sam approaching him like a bull in a china shop about it, trying to force the confidence, an approach that is just never going to work with Dean.

DEAN: "I can't talk about this to Sammy. No, I got to keep my game face on. But, uh, truth is I'm not handling it very well."

Whereupon the entire audience says 'well, duh!' because that much has been blatantly obvious for the last two episodes, and it's not just about John's death: it's about that top-secret burden John laid on him before his death – a secret he's had hanging over him ever since, opening up a vast gulf between him and his brother, who remains clueless. There's too much that can't be said for anything to be said at all. And both brothers place too many pre-conceived expectations on one another for easy communication under these circumstances.

DEAN: "I feel I have this…"
GORDON: "Hole inside you? And it just gets bigger and bigger, and darker and darker. Good. You can use it, keeps you hungry. Trust me – there's plenty out there needs killing, and this'll help you do it. Dean, it's not a crime to need your job."

With talking to Sam about all this out of the question, Dean is clearly feeling a strong affinity with Gordon, a fellow hunter with similar appetite for hunting, drinking and having a good time as he does, someone who seems to understand how he's feeling right now in a way that he simply cannot share with Sam, who approaches just about everything from a different direction entirely. The advice Gordon is offering sounds valid in the light of how Dean feels at the moment, offering validation for the reactions that have been disturbing him so much. But he also doesn't seem entirely sure he likes everything Gordon is telling him about himself.

Ellen's roadhouse, as encountered for the first time last episode. The phone rings, and Ellen answers. It's Sam, and Ellen, after expressing genuine pleasure at hearing from him, promptly comes over all concerned and maternal. "You boys are okay, aren't you?" Sam assures her that they are both fine, asking if she's ever heard of a guy called Gordon Walker. Yes, Ellen knows him, and noncommittally describes him as a 'real good hunter'. Sam goes on to explain that they've run into him on a job and are kind of working with him, and Ellen's attitude changes at once, becoming concerned.

ELLEN: "Don't do that, Sam."
SAM: "I thought you said he was a good hunter?"
ELLEN: "Yeah, and Hannibal Lecter's a good psychiatrist. Look, he is dangerous to everyone and everything around him. If he's working on a job, you boys just let him handle it and you move on."

She really does take a maternal tone with Sam, and he responds to it, trusting her instinctively. Sam is the baby of the family, well accustomed to being mother-henned by those around him. Right now he's had his nose put out of joint by his brother's new friend, and Ellen just handed him validation for his gut reaction.

Back at the bar, Gordon and Dean are still drinking and talking.

GORDON: "Know why I love this life? It's all black and white. There's no maybe. You find a bad thing – you kill it. See, most people spend their lives in shades of grey – is this right, is that wrong? Not us."

Dean looks like he's finding this attitude almost comforting, certainly appealing, but he comments that Sam probably wouldn't agree.

GORDON: "Doesn't seem like your brother's much like us."

Oh, but Dean does not like hearing that – the eyes go hard at once.

GORDON [cont]: "I'm not saying he's wrong, just different. See, you and me – we were born to do this. It's in our blood."

For all his earlier bluster about going it alone, Gordon definitely seems to be enjoying having found someone he can take under his wing as a kindred spirit. Dean looks thoughtful, and conflicted. In his current state of mind, fraying at the edges having lost his point of reference, what Gordon is saying makes a lot of sense, and offers him the kind of validation of his feelings and actions that he wants, needs to hear. And yet, at the same time, a part of him almost shies away from accepting it. He doesn't want to feel this way forever, as Gordon is suggesting he will or should.

Back at the motel, Sam has stepped out of his room for a moment to get a soda from the machine. Sam looks older this season. I think it's the hair. And the shoulders, which seem huger than ever. But mostly the hair. Sam's hair is going to be a source of amusement to me all season, or at least until he gets it trimmed tidy. But I digress. Wandering back to his room, Sam gets a little spooked, like he thinks there's someone watching him, maybe creeping up on him….

He makes it back inside room#4 without incident, breathes a sigh of relief, and laughs at his own paranoia. But we already know from two previous examples this episode that false alarms are almost always false, and before you can say 'trust your instincts, Sam', someone has leapt out at him. Sam fights back, against one opponent, two opponents… The first recovers to smack him across the back of the head with an old fashioned telephone while he grapples with the second. The phone makes a chirpy 'bring!' sound as it makes contact, which is just fantastic. Sam goes down like a sack of spuds.

A beautifully artistic and cinematographic establishing shot shows a car driving over a bridge.

Sam comes around, tied to a chair, with a bag over his head. Once the bag is removed and his eyes have adjusted to the light, he focuses on the angry face of the man towering over him, and it's the barkeeper he bribed earlier! This is Eli, and he is a vampire. He's also very, very angry. Gagged, Sam strains against his bonds in fear as Eli's vampire teeth are displayed in full, just so that neither Sam nor the audience is in any doubt as to what has snatched Sam from his motel room. Eli leans in close, vampire teeth getting right in Sam's face while Sam, unable to pull away, tries desperately to maintain an air of manly bravado – but then a woman's voice snaps out an order. "Wait. Step back, Eli."

And it's Amber Benson, who once played the ever-sweet Tara in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This role is…very, very different. Kudos to her. Eli obeys at once, albeit with a bad grace, and the female vampire strides over to Sam and pulls the gag from his mouth. "My name's Lenore, I'm not gonna hurt you. We just need to talk."

All panic-stricken and fearful, Sam snarks back at her. "Talk? Yeah, okay. But I might have a tough time paying attention to much besides Eli's teeth."

Lenore gives him her word that he won't be harmed, and Sam scoffs at the idea of a vampire's word being worth anything. He's met her kind before.

LENORE: "We're not like the others. We don't kill humans and we don't drink their blood, we haven't for a long time."
SAM: "What is this, some kind of joke?"
LENORE: "Notice you're still alive."

Sam can't deny that fact, and is bemused, wondering why they aren't starving to death. Lenore informs him that they've found other ways, cattle blood – those incidents of cattle mutilation mentioned earlier – and that is isn't ideal, disgusting in fact, but it allows them to get by. Sam asks why.

LENORE: "Survival. No deaths, no missing locals, no reason for people like you to come looking for people like us. We blend in. Our kind is practically extinct. Turns out we weren't quite as high up the food chain as we imagined."

Eli bad-temperedly grumbles about explaining themselves to a killer – which has got to sting a bit because Sam isn't at the business end of the killing all that often and so has the luxury of being able to define himself purely as a hunter, not a killer – and complains long and hard about choking on cow's blood so that humans don't suffer, and about the hunters celebrating Conrad's death. Vampires in this universe are pack animals with emotions and relationships – they mourn the loss of their loved ones just as Sam and Dean mourn their father and Gordon his sister.

LENORE: "Eli, that's enough."
SAM: "Yeah, Eli, that's enough."

Snerk. Dean would be so proud of him, snarking back in the face of danger. Lenore insists that what's done is done, and tells Sam that the vampires are leaving this town, tonight. Sam wonders why, in that case, they went to all the trouble of abducting him.

LENORE: "I know your kind. Once you have the scent you'll keep tracking us, it doesn't matter where we go. Hunters will find us."

Interesting turn of phrase there. We know that once a vampire has someone's scent they've got it for life, and can identify and track that scent from miles off. Lenore's use of the phrase here is a lot more figurative, though, its use likening the hunters to her own kind. They fight the same battle, but on opposing sides, each believing utterly in the justice of their own cause.

SAM: "So you're asking us not to follow you."
LENORE: "We have a right to live, we're not hurting anyone."

Vampire Luthor tried a similar line last season, only without the 'we're not hurting anyone' part, and in his case the fact that he was feeding off humans invalidated his argument. Here, though, Lenore seems to have more of a case. Sam asks for one good reason why he should believe her, and Lenore leans in real close. "Fine. You know what I'm going to do?"

Sam is afraid, and rightly so, because she's fantastically menacing, but then totally pulls the rug from under his feet – but metaphorically speaking, not really, because he's still sitting there tied to the chair – by explaining what she's going to do. "I'm going to let you go."

Sam wasn't expecting that. Lenore casually orders Eli to take him back, not a mark on him. Sam goes from surprised to amazed and thence to dismayed, since this means he has to rethink everything he thought he knew about vampires, as he finds her argument more persuasive than he'd ever have imagined. See, it wasn't the killing of the vampire he had a problem with earlier – he knew that to be only right and proper – it was the effect it had on Dean that bothered him, and then the bonding with Gordon, feeling excluded. He's been missing feeling close to his brother, who is all he has left in the world. Now, though, the vampires themselves and their right or lack thereof to live has become the burning issue.

Bag over his head once more, Sam is ushered out of the house by Eli and another male vampire, and into their car for the journey back to the motel.

Back at the motel, drinking session over and apparently not so drunk that they can't think straight, Dean and Gordon are poring over a map of the area, working out where the vampires might be based on what they know and where Gordon has already searched. Gordon, believing he has found in Dean a genuine kindred spirit to take under his wing, seems to have completely reversed his 'I work alone' credo, and now appears to be only to happy to join forces. Sam's absence does not seem to be a source of any major concern, so the vampires must have tidied the place up after all the scuffling when they abducted him, although Dean has noticed that he's not there and the fact is bothering him.

DEAN: "What time is it? Where is Sam?"
GORDON: "Car's parked outside – probably went for a walk. Seems like the take a walk type."

Dean wearily rubs a hand over his face in the manner of one both fatigued and alcohol-hazed, agreeing that yes, Sam is, but –

Sam himself walks in at this point, resembling nothing so much as a stunned mullet after the night of shocks and thrills he's been having. Dean immediately asks where he's been, and Sam counters that by asking to talk to him alone, outside. Dean agrees at once; they are still a unit, just the two of them, against the world. Gordon or no Gordon.

Outside, Sam promptly tells Dean that they maybe have to rethink this hunt. Dean has no idea what he's talking about, and asks again where he's been. "In the nest," Sam tells him, sounding like he still can't quite believe it himself. It's Dean's turn to be amazed as Sam explains that he didn't find the vampires – they found him.

DEAN: "How'd you get out, how many'd you kill?"
SAM: "None."
DEAN: "Well, Sam, they didn't just let you go."
SAM: "That's exactly what they did."

Having had a long day and spent half the night drinking, Dean can't quite take this in, and so shifts back to the 'where' question again. Dean would always rather focus on the practical than the theoretical. Having been blindfolded, Sam rather defensively insists that he doesn't know, beyond that they went over the bridge outside of town – a geographical reference overheard by Gordon, skulking in the shadows – and he really doesn't seem interested in the 'where' so much as the moral dilemma he's been presented with. He's conflicted, and doesn't appear to have entirely made his mind up yet, asking Dean what he thinks and wanting to discuss the situation. Talking things through was something they'd got so good at by the end of last season. "Maybe we shouldn't go after them…I don't think they're like other vampires. I don't think they're killing people."

But Dean just can't accept the concept of a good vampire. "Then how do they stay alive? Or…undead, or whatever the hell they are."

Sam explains about the cow's blood, and Dean still can't believe it. He wasn't there; he doesn't have the experience of Lenore and Eli to back up Sam's words. What he does have is a lifetime of knowing without any doubt that creatures such as vampires are evil, end of story. Earlier tonight he killed a vampire and felt good about it, it was a fight-and-kill he'd been itching for since John's death, and having been conflicted over how he felt about his own violent urges, a fair amount of alcohol and Gordon's encouraging influence brought back the feeling good about it. And now Sam is trying to tell him that the vampires here aren't evil after all. He's nowhere near the right frame of mind to be able to accept that – starts to make the attempt, but then rejects the notion before he has to think too hard about the implications.

SAM: "Look at me, Dean. They let me go without a scratch."
DEAN: "What, so you're saying…? No, man. No way. I don't know why they let you go, I don't really care. We find 'em, we waste 'em."

He's clinging to Gordon's black-and-white worldview now, because taking on board what Sam is saying means asking a lot of huge questions about the work they do, and with his world already rocking so badly he really can't face that. But Sam, getting angry now at having his mind-blowing experience dismissed out of hand, persists with his argument that these vampires are different.

DEAN: "What part of 'vampires' don't you understand, Sam? If it's supernatural, we kill it, end of story. That's our job."
SAM: "No, Dean, that is not our job. Our job is hunting evil. And if these things aren't killing people, they're not evil."

Dean uses the word 'kill', while Sam uses the word 'hunt' to describe what they do. It's significant. It's no coincidence that it is Dean who kills the majority of the evil things they hunt, another burden he carries so that Sam won't have to. Seriously – go back through season one and count (since I can't find the article to link to that does the counting for you). The life saving works out about equal, but if there's killing to be done, it almost always works out that Dean is the one who does it, while Sam keeps his hands relatively clean. And at the moment Dean's lost his focus, so that the killing part has overtaken the saving of lives part of his agenda.

DEAN: "Of course they're killing people, that's what they do, they're all the same, Sam. They're not human, okay. We have to exterminate every last one of them."

Sam can't quite grasp that for Dean, supernatural and evil are one and the same thing, and that his entire life's experience only serves to back up that concept. It's the reason he couldn't accept the idea of a faith healer back in Faith, and the events of that episode no doubt only served to harden his belief that supernatural and evil are synonymous. The only evidence he's ever had to the contrary is Sam himself and his visions – and he's not exactly happy about those, even if he'd never dream of letting Sam know that.

Kind of makes you wonder where Sam got his belief that there are good things out there as well as evil. Maybe it's just their very different personalities, or maybe it stems from the deep divide between protector and protected. Sam retains so much more innocence than his brother, largely because of his brother.

Having encountered opposition to his change of heart regarding the vampires, Sam is no longer hesitant but becomes insistent, hardening his own stance. Just as Dean can't see past what he believes is the innate evilness of all things supernatural, Sam now can't see past the…not even good, because that's not what it was…the lack of evil he found in his one brief conversation with Lenore. He's apparently chosen to disregard the fact that Eli totally would have killed him but for Lenore's restraining influence.

Dean points out the fact that Gordon has been tailing these vampires for a year, and would know if they were killing or not, and Sam is offended.

SAM: "Gordon? You're taking his word for it?"

Over mine, he doesn't say, but manages to strongly imply. And Gordon really isn't the issue here, but there's more than a hint of jealousy creeping in now, that Dean so readily relaxed and bonded with Gordon when he's been keeping Sam so much at arm's length.

Sam in this episode is giving the appearance of handling things much better than Dean now, since he took such a big step toward making his peace with John last episode – although he had to cast Dean in the role of John's substitute in order to do so, with John not being around to apologise to – and since he's been focusing so much on Dean rather than his own grief this episode. Dean needs time and space to process things internally before he can start to heal, and for the most part Sam has been giving him that, although it remains obvious that he very much wants Dean to open up to him in the same way that Sam himself needs to open up and share his own feelings in order to work through them. His concern is obvious, but he's trying to be unobtrusive about it – or was, until Gordon showed up.

But it's important to remember that Sam does still have his own issues around John's death, is still grieving himself. And that he has always transferred his issues with John onto Dean. Here, Dean is behaving in the same way that always riled Sam about John, not listening to what he has to say, dismissing it out of hand, and Sam reacts in much the same way that he always did with John: reasoned debate goes flying out of the window, and he angrily picks a fight, deliberately baiting his brother instead of presenting his argument rationally and trying to find the right note in order to convince.

Sam argues that Ellen says Gordon is bad news, which is the wrong line to take with Dean, who is as wary of Ellen as Sam is of Gordon, and reacts accordingly. "You called Ellen? And I'm supposed to listen to her? We barely know her, Sam. No thanks, I'll go with Gordon."

It figures that Dean would be the one to have issues with maternal figures, having known his mother and had her snatched away from him so young, whereas Sam has never known what a mother was and maybe yearns for a little maternal influence in his life. And we're now a long, long way from the actual issue at hand here, which was the unusual vampire situation in this town. Since John's death the brothers have lost the ability to communicate with one another effectively, their separate issues around their father's death, and the inability of each to really understand the other's perspective on that matter clouding every conversation.

SAM: "Right, 'cause Gordon's such an old friend. You don't think I can see what this is…? He's a substitute for Dad, isn't he? A poor one."

And Sam is right, of course – the reason Dean feels so drawn to Gordon is because he misses John's reassuring presence as a strong male role model in his life, the ultimate authority to fall back on when in doubt. But this is not the way to tackle him on the issue.

"Shut up, Sam." Dean turns and starts to walk away, just as he always backs away from any conversation with Sam that threatens his emotional defences. He's spent too long and invested too much energy into being strong in front of Sam over the years to be able to lower those defences now. But Sam just won't let it drop, won't let him walk away from the argument, and keeps pushing and pushing – every bit as much of a bull in a china shop as Dean can be. Dean got pretty good last season at handling Sam when he's emotionally fragile, although he's been knocked too much off-balance himself this season to be able to spare any energy for dealing with Sam's issues. But Sam has no idea how to deal with Dean when he's the emotionally fragile one and so resorts in frustration to baiting him, trying to provoke the reaction he wants that way, with all the sensitivity of a sledgehammer. Sam's hurting and off-balance, too.

SAM: "He's not even close, Dean. Not on his best day."
DEAN: "You know what, I'm not even going to talk about it."
SAM: "You know, you slap on this big fake smile, but I can see right through it, 'cause I know how you feel, Dean. Dad's dead, and he left a hole and it hurts so bad you can't take it, but you can't just fill up that hole with whoever you want to. It's an insult to his memory."

Right out of nowhere, that's a horribly personal attack on Dean's grieving process and coping mechanisms. Again. You'd think he'd have learned that lesson last episode, when Dean immediately turned it back around on him. He's putting Dean on the defensive, and Dean's favoured method of defence in these circumstances is to attack, to divert the attention away from himself. Sam's timing is lousy; he's never quite grasped the concept that mid-job when nerves are on edge anyway is about the worst possible time for the raking over of painful emotional issues – we saw that only too clearly in Dead Man's Blood. And this isn't just mid-job; it's mid-job in the middle of the night and after a heavy drinking session. Sam's timing sucks, and so does his methodology.

There were reasons Dean didn't want to talk about any of this with Sam, not least of which is that pent-up anger he's got churning away inside over so many issues, rage we caught a glimpse of at the end of the last episode when he lashed out as his beloved car. He keeps his defences so firmly in place, especially around Sam, and here's Sam just ripping right through them and cornering him with issues he doesn't want to face up to. Especially not here and not now. It's the final straw. He shakes his head and smiles to himself in disbelief that Sam has gone so far, that towering rage building and burning inside, and then he just turns back round and lands one on his brother, solid right hook.

And, you know, hitting bad, and all. But Sam was the one who got so intensely personal, knowing full well that it would be like a red rag to a bull. He wants Dean to open up to him, but can't seem to understand that hammering on his defences has the opposite effect entirely; that it pushes him further away. Dean likes to work things through by himself, in his own time and space. Sam prefers to talk things through more openly and share his pain, and Dean isn't indulging him in that because he's too busy dealing with his own pain in his own way; this is still as much about Sam's grief and issues as it is Dean's. Neither is capable of providing what the other needs right now.

So, Sam clutches his abused face, and Dean's still itching for a fight – waiting for and wanting Sam to lash out at him in return. If Sam was hoping to provoke a reaction, then so was Dean. Dean reacts to emotional turmoil with physical action, in hopes that burning off some of his angry energy and converting emotional pain into physical pain will make him feel better. But Sam won't retaliate – not physically, anyway. Sam reacts to stress by trying to pick fights verbally in hopes of provoking a reaction that'll prove he isn't alone in what he's going through and thus make him feel better. So similar, and yet so different.

SAM: "You can hit me all you want, it won't change anything."

Shutting down once more on all these painful issues that have been stirred up, Dean focuses on the practical matter at hand.

DEAN: "I'm going to that nest. You don't want to tell me where it is, fine. I'll find it myself."

Dean marches back into room#4, and Sam hastily follows, having completely failed to convince his brother about the sheer difference of these vampires, mostly because he stopped trying. Inside, they instantly hit upon a snag: Gordon has gone. Sam insists that they have to stop him from going after the vampires, but Dean angrily counters that they should be lending a hand. Exasperated, Sam asks to be given the benefit of the doubt. "You owe me that."

Now that was a tactic he could and should have employed a long time ago, appealing to brotherly trust instead of getting into a spat over Ellen, Gordon and John. Could have saved himself a shiner. Dean has always found it hard to say no to Sam when he wheedles, whereas confrontations generally end in stalemate.

Dean stops arguing when Sam appeals for his trust, and just asks for the car keys, at which point a second snag is hit upon. The keys, as left on the cactus by Sam earlier, have gone. Seems Gordon has learned his lesson about how much better the boys are at tracking than he is at covering his tracks, and has taken the keys to slow them down.

Dean is highly disgruntled about having to hotwire his newly rebuilt car – taking those keys just lost Gordon a lot of brownie points. Now they need to work out where they are going, and here Sam comes into his own. Studying a map, he's pretty much able to work out the exact route he was taken, based on how many minutes it took to get to the bridge and other significant landmarks, and between each right or left turn. Dean is impressed.

DEAN: "You're good. A monster pain in the ass… But you're good."

That's Dean-speak for 'I'm sorry about smacking you one earlier', an apology he can't bring himself to say out loud in so many words, not least because doing so raises other issues once more, and he wants those left buried. Sam, who has always been better at holding onto a grudge than his brother, doesn't seem to be in the mood for translation of Dean-speak of any kind and just rolls his eyes huffily. The Impala speeds off, with Dean at the wheel, despite all that alcohol consumption earlier.

Chez Vampire, Lenore and Eli are packing up ready to leave town. Eli tries to talk her into staying and fighting – whether they call it revenge or self-defence – but Lenore is resolute that killing those three hunters wouldn't solve anything, as there would always be more, they are outnumbered and that this is all they can do, try and reason –

ELI: "You can't reason with these people. They're going to kill us all anyway. We should at least take a few of them with us."

Eli is totally playing Dean to Lenore's Sam here, hard-line versus compromise. And his desire for revenge puts a whole new spin on the scene in which the now deceased Conrad tried to kill Gordon. It wasn't as simple as a vampire trying to kill a human, or even a vampire fighting for his life – attempting to take Gordon's head off with that chainsaw was about exacting revenge for Conrad's fellow vampires that Gordon had already beheaded. Shades of grey abound, but not everyone can see them.

But Lenore is very much in charge of this little vampire gang, and can see clearly that vengeance is futile, that further killings will only ever beget more killings, that compromise has to start somewhere. "I'm not giving up hope," she insists. "If we can change, they can change."

She sends him into town to gather the others, which answers a question I'd been pondering over whether all the vampires lived together communally or not, and if so, why they didn't attract more attention. Evidently not, they have places of their own – town is full of vampires living in the community, holding down jobs and feeding off cattle, and the local residents don't have a clue.

Gordon's car crosses the bridge, in another artily shot scene. Once over the bridge, he apparently allows his intuition or whatever to guide him as to which direction to choose. In the Impala, meanwhile, the atmosphere is tense, what with the brothers being so at odds over how they are going to play things when they do catch up with Gordon and the vampires.

Eli having gone to fetch the rest of the vampires, Lenore continues to pack the car all alone. But Gordon manages to sneak up on her, grabs her, and swiftly plunges a dagger soaked in dead man's blood into her abdomen. Nasty.

Cut to – more nastiness. Gordon continues to coat his knife with dead man's blood with which to torture the already impressively battered and bleeding Lenore, and we are now light years past killing evil things because it has to be done to protect the innocent. This is sadistic, taking pleasure in inflicting suffering, and that's the point – that Gordon has long since passed the point where he can see the difference.

Sam and Dean arrive, and Gordon greets them cheerfully, explaining that he is poisoning Lenore with dead man's blood so that she'll tell him where to find the other vampires, and inviting them to help. He is no longer capable of seeing that he has crossed an invisible divide, that his actions are repulsing them – both of them. Sam is openly horrified at the torture, while the deeply unnerved Dean keeps his reactions more under control, but his eyes say it all. He was never quite as completely convinced by Gordon as Sam thought he was, although he wanted to be because all those issues he's been struggling to deal with appeared so much cleaner and simpler when seen through Gordon's eyes. But the bond of comradeship he built up with the man in their little drinking session evaporated the moment he walked through the door and saw what Gordon was doing.

It is no longer just about whether or not it is right to kill these particular vampires, whether or not it is acceptable to let them go. Sam had already made up his mind on that point, while Dean remained sceptical, but Gordon's actions are now muddying the waters considerably, adding a whole new dimension to the issue. Whether the vampires are evil or not, Gordon's treatment of Lenore is unacceptable, turning a relatively straightforward two-way debate into a very messy triangular dispute with no clean solution.

Dean tries to calm the situation without taking sides, since he is by no means convinced that Sam was right about the vampires, but now he's not prepared to trust Gordon's interpretation of the situation, either. This indecision pretty much gives him the casting vote, ultimately.

Sam, who already made his mind up a long time ago and is focused completely on what he wants to happen, goes straight for the hard-line 'put the knife down' approach, which sets Gordon on his guard at once. He nods, and casually agrees that Sam is right – he's wasting his time trying to get her to talk, and should just kill her and get it over with. He pulls out a knife, remarking that he just sharpened it, so it's completely humane, and although that mildly expressed comment is mostly sarcasm for Sam's sake he totally doesn't see the incongruity of arguing the humane approach after the suffering already inflicted.

When in a situation he can be objective about, Sam can debate perfectly rationally and reasonably. But when he's really focused on something that matters to him he loses his objectivity, and with it his ability to see the clearest way forward. He becomes blinkered. Here, he demonstrates his bull in a china shop approach once more, simply stating categorically that he is going to let Lenore go, the whatever anybody else thinks part heavily implied, and then striding purposefully toward her, as if he really thinks it's going to be that simple. But this just brings him within range of the deranged man wielding the large knife, which Gordon promptly points right at him, blocking his route to Lenore. Realising his tactical error, Sam shuts up, and Dean cuts in, again trying to defuse the situation. Mediator is a role Dean is long accustomed to playing. "Gordon. Let's talk about this."

Gordon doesn't see that there's anything to talk about, still seeing no shades of grey. Lenore is a vampire, not human; therefore there is nothing whatsoever wrong with what he's doing. Dean continues with his calm, rational approach, attempting to reason with the unbalanced man still pointing a large and very sharp knife at his brother. "I know how you feel. The vampire that killed your sister deserved to die, but this –"

Gordon chuckles, but there's no humour in it whatsoever. "That filthy fang didn't kill my sister. It turned her. It made her one of them. So I hunted her down and I killed her myself."

Dean is brought up sharp in his tracks. "You did what?" In spite of everything he said to Sam earlier about vampires being evil, end of story, he is dumbstruck at the idea of killing a beloved relative that's been turned. He refused to shoot John when he believed his father to be possessed by The Demon, and begged Sam not to do it either, because it was John, yet earlier he'd killed a possessed man without hesitation because Sam's life was in danger – a killing he's still coming to terms with now. Dean can see the shades of grey in Gordon's scenario only too clearly; he's not as much like Gordon as either of them thought.

Gordon does not see the conflict here, calmly pointing out that it wasn't his sister any more, that it wasn't human. Black and white, no shades of grey – that really is how he views the world. "I didn't blink. And neither would you."

Black and white – Gordon believes, without any doubt at all, that Dean sees the world in the exact same way that he does, with Sam as the polar opposite, because to his mind those are the only two options. He is incapable of comprehending that both brothers are far more complex than that. That shades of grey exist in them both, that the many varied differences between them can and do meet in the middle and sometimes overlap.

Dean is silenced by Gordon's confident declaration, asking as it does such a deeply searching question of him. But Sam barely even seems to hear it and takes over once more, realising that Gordon had known all along that the vampires weren't killing people and that he just didn't care. Gordon freely admits it, completely unmoved – from his perspective the fact that the vampires are taking time out from feeding off humans changes nothing. They are evil, and he kills them.

Lingering shot of Dean with troubled eyes, trying to process both the situation with regard to the vampires, and Gordon's words about himself and his brother. Could he bring himself to take Sam out should the worst happen? He looks repulsed by the idea, but he's questioning a hell of a lot right now, not least of which is himself, and he knows full well that sometimes you have to do things that repulse you.

Gordon continues the debate, claiming that he can prove a vampire never really changes its true nature. To demonstrate this point, he makes his biggest tactical error yet by grabbing Sam, slicing his arm open and hauling him over to Lenore.

That simplifies things considerably. Dean reacts instantly, gun out and cocked and aimed right at Gordon's head. No one threatens Dean's little brother and gets away with it. Gordon calmly says that if he wanted to kill Sam he'd have done so already, that he's just making a point. Knife at Sam's throat – because they always go for Sam's throat – he holds Sam's arm over Lenore's head so that the blood, human blood, drips onto her face. She reacts, vamping out, hissing and snarling and straining toward the blood: nothing human about her at all any more.

Gordon's point proved, right? Sam is alarmed, Dean shouts angrily, and Gordon rests his case. But Lenore regains control of herself and morphs back into human face without so much as tasting Sam's blood, demonstrating her iron self control as she moans, "No. No," refusing to drink. And the case for the defence is proved – this was the practical demonstration Dean needed to genuinely sway him onto Sam's side of the debate, rather than simply siding with him because it's either that or give Gordon's unacceptable methods his approval.

Gordon is a bit taken aback by all this, which gives Sam the opportunity to free himself and move clear of the knife. Dismayed, Gordon backs off a little. Having now gained Dean's assent, Sam gently lifts Lenore and carries her out of the room to safety, whereupon Gordon regains enough composure to protest, but is held off at gunpoint by Dean. "Gordon, I think you and I got some things to talk about."

Standoff. Dean has his gun; Gordon has his knife. Gordon is kind of disillusioned with Dean for standing in his way, but Dean, having made up his mind on this point, is resolute. He's having a hard time believing it himself, still, but he knows what he saw. Plus, Gordon's actions have made the alternative option unpalatable. "If you want those vampires, you gotta go through me."

He's used that line before, notably in Nightmare, but he could never in his wildest dreams have imagined standing between a bunch of vampires and a fellow hunter, and his world was already rocking on its foundations before this happened.

Gordon slams his knife point-down into the table, laying down his weapon and thus calling the truce, admitting defeat. As a reciprocal show of good faith, Dean ejects and pockets the cartridge from his gun, which he then tucks into his waistband, taking his eyes off Gordon in the process: Dean's turn to make a serious tactical error. He still doesn't fully comprehend just how lacking in any kind of moral code Gordon really is.

Gordon instantly takes advantage of Dean's momentary distraction to smack him hard in the face. Dean promptly punches back, but Gordon quickly snatches his knife up again. So now Gordon is armed once more and Dean isn't, but Dean has got that towering rage working for him that he's been so desperate to unleash all episode. A lot of testosterone-charged mutual battering follows, during which Dean succeeds in forcing Gordon to drop the knife, but then is hurled across a table, which shatters under him, for his trouble. If attacks on Sam always end up going for the throat, attacks on Dean always result in him being thrown into things.

GORDON: "Come on, Dean, we're on the same side, here."
DEAN: "I don't think so, you sadistic bastard."

If Gordon is disappointed with Dean for not seeing things his way, as he'd been so sure he would, then Dean is all the more disappointed with Gordon for crossing that invisible divide between what's acceptable and what's not, when Dean had identified so strongly with the man. So just how much of this is about pounding on Gordon because the other man made him take a good look at himself, and he's not sure he likes what he sees?

GORDON: "You're not like your brother. You're a killer, like me."

On the floor at this stage, Dean promptly takes the man's legs out from under him. He's never liked being called a killer – he kills evil things in order to save innocent lives, and the saving of those innocent lives has always been the most important part of his self-image. But the lengths he is prepared to go to in order to save those lives has been troubling him a lot lately, finding it harder and harder to know where to draw the line. And tonight Gordon has shown him just how easily he could cross that line without even noticing. So at this point he really does unleash all that pent-up rage and that's the point at which Gordon genuinely no longer stands a chance of winning the fight. After viciously pummelling him into submission, Dean gets him into a headlock and vindictively, yet ever so calmly, walks his head into a wall before tying him to a chair.

DEAN: "You know, I might be like you; I might not. But you're the one tied up right now."

Another beautiful establishing shot, this time of the sun rising over nearby fields. Morning has broken.

In Lenore's house, Gordon is still tied to that chair, while Dean wanders aimlessly around the room holding Gordon's knife and wincing a little from time to time as his developing bruises make themselves felt. Sam returns, the gash on his arm now bandaged up, and can't help but notice the battered appearance of both, and Gordon's captivity.

SAM: "I miss anything?"
DEAN: "Nah, not much."

Gordon is sullen as Sam reports back that Lenore and company have now left town safely.

Letting those vampires go was the right thing to do, under the circumstances, especially after Gordon's involvement had muddied the waters so much and lost the humans the moral high ground. But it has to be noted, for the record, that it's a hell of a risk to take. It seems fairly clear that Lenore is the only thing keeping her pack from reverting. For as long as Lenore is around, maintains her dominant status over the other vampires in her group, and doesn't become disillusioned with the life-choice she's made to swear off humans, then they are safe to continue living in the community, hiding their true nature. But if the status quo is changed for any reason…those vampires remain extremely dangerous. More shades of grey – nothing is ever completely clear-cut. All you can do is hope and trust.

Dean is now satisfied that their work here is done, even if it wasn't the work they were expecting to do, and cheerfully informs Gordon that they'll call someone in a couple of days to have them come and untie him but he'll have to sit tight till them, Gordon being such a dangerous loose-canon to have roaming free just at the moment. Sam asks if he's ready to go. Not yet, says Dean. He's not done with Gordon yet. Sam makes no effort to intervene, just lets him get on with it. One last punch, and Gordon-and-chair go flying over backward, and hit the ground hard. Sam doesn't even look like he minds, this time – if Dean's violence in dealing with the vampire earlier bothered him, he has no problem at all with Dean being violent toward Gordon. And now Dean's ready to go.

Those boys had better hope they don't run into Gordon again any time soon. I doubt he'll remember them at all fondly. Kind of makes you wonder what the hunters' grapevine is going to make of this little incident. The boys already have reputations in the fraternity that they were entirely unaware of.

Also, I really hope Dean remembered to reclaim his car keys from Gordon's possession.

Outside, Dean remains tense, and troubled, and stops walking.

DEAN: "Sam, clock me one."
SAM: "What?"
DEAN: "Come on, I won't even hit you back. Let's go."

Still can't say sorry – this is as close as he's going to get. But this time, now that Dean has come over to his way of thinking, Sam is willing to interpret and accept the non-apology, and just laughs and says no.

DEAN: "Let's go, you get a freebie. Hit me, come on."
SAM: "You look like you just went twelve rounds with a block of cement, Dean. I'll take a rain check."

They walk toward the car, and now, finally, a very despondent Dean manages to open up just a tiny bit to his brother about his inner turmoil that this job has only succeeded in making worse.

DEAN: "I wish we never took this job, it's jacked everything up."
SAM: "What do you mean?"
DEAN: "Think about all the hunts we went on, Sammy, our whole lives. What if we'd killed things that didn't deserve killing? You know? I mean, the way Dad raised us, it…"

He looks and sounds so distressed now; starting to question everything: all the principles he's based his life around, including John and his crusade, the way they were raised. For Dean, that's huge. Faith in John was always his bedrock, but that faith is wavering now: John has proved himself fallible, and if he was wrong about one thing, lied about one thing, concealed one thing, then what else might be have been wrong about, lied about, or tried to hide…?

Besides which, even when John wasn't around, he remained the last line of authority to fall back on and what the boys were enforcing was, in effect, John's Law. But now that John is gone they are themselves the last line of the law on the cases they hunt, having to make all the big decisions, having to choose what's right and what's wrong, and it's a big responsibility. It's a responsibility both have already proved themselves capable of shouldering, but they are working without a safety net now, and Dean is finding that adjustment hard to make, having to find out who he really is without John as his principle point of reference. Change is always painful. Gordon told Dean he was a killer, and it bothers him to recognise that about himself. But at least he now feels able to express some of this to Sam.

And it's Sam's turn to defend John, to make excuses and attempt to reason things out. Sam can afford to be sympathetic and supportive now that the crisis is over, now that Dean has come around to his way of thinking. And here and now, Sam really is at his supportive best, listening to what Dean has to say and offering words of comfort as best he can, happy that his brother is finally talking to him and allowing him to do so. This is what he's been wanting all along. Sam wants and needs to be there for Dean as much as he wants and needs Dean to be there for him.

SAM: "After what happened to Mom, Dad did the best he could."
DEAN: "I know he did. But the man wasn't perfect. And the way he raised us, to hate those things – and man, I hate 'em, I do… When I killed that vampire at the mill, I didn't even think about it, hell, I enjoyed it."
SAM: "You didn't kill Lenore."
DEAN: "No, but every instinct told me to. I was gonna kill her – I was gonna kill them all."
SAM: "Yeah, Dean, but you didn't. And that's what matters.
DEAN [not looking at him]: "Yeah. Because you're a pain in my ass."
SAM: "Guess I might have to stick around to be a pain in the ass, then."
DEAN: "Thanks."
SAM: "Don't mention it."

Aww. Actual communication once more, at last. They need each other so much right now. And although Dean might not have been able to say 'sorry', he did manage to verbalise his gratitude for Sam's steadying influence that he needs more than ever at the moment. That's important. But that secret of John's that Dean is holding onto remains a barrier.

Sam gets into the car. Dean stays where he is a moment longer, leaning pensively against the car, and this whole scene is just beautifully shot, so arty and cinematographic, it's just gorgeous, the final shot of Dean framed in the early morning sunlight especially so. Then he follows Sam into the car, and away they go.


October 2006

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